1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the delivery of data over a wireless communications link and, in particular, to a method for implementing data delivery without requiring immediate delivery acknowledgment.
2. Description of Related Art
The radio environment utilized for wireless communications systems presents several conditions which sometimes cause problems with effectuating communication. One of these conditions is extreme fading. Fading in this context refers to a reduction in signal strength of a radio frequency communication at a receiver due to atmospheric propagation effects such as reflection, scattering, refraction, absorption or dispersion. It has been noted in bi-directional wireless personal communications systems (including cellular and paging systems) that the adverse affects of fading are particularly experienced with respect to communications transmitted on the uplink/reverse channel (i.e., from mobile station to base station). As such, a mobile station may have little difficulty in receiving base station communications broadcasts on the downlink/forward channel, while at the same time the base station cannot receive mobile station uplink communications.
As a prerequisite to establishing a data communications connection between a serving network and a mobile station in a wireless communications system, the network often first polls for the mobile station. If no response to the poll message is thereafter received from the mobile station, no communications connection is established to effectuate data communication delivery. If the poll message is acknowledged by the mobile station, a communications connection is established and frames of the data communication are thereafter sent to the mobile station. Unless the communications protocol being used specifies otherwise, reception of each of the frames by the mobile station is typically acknowledged.
In many instances, the fading environment does not prevent the mobile station from receiving the poll message. Rather, the problem is that the page response message sent by the mobile station is not received by the network base station. Within such a fading environment, there is a high probability that if the mobile station can successfully receive and decode the poll message, then frames of the data communication could also be successfully received for at least a short time thereafter. In this situation, a more efficient use of limited radio environment resources would be obtained if, instead of waiting for the fading condition to subside, network delivery of the frames of the data communication could be effectuated at that point in time without requiring mobile station acknowledgment.